Page 3

The horror wasn’t confined to the television anymore. It was here.

By now, the news was reporting things like "calling out the national guard" and "CDC quarantine" but it was already too late. Later that afternoon, I saw one of them running down the street. An eater. A z-monster. Skinbag. Whatever you want to call it. One of them.

It wasn’t human. That much was obvious. There were trace things that were reminiscent of humanity – one shoe, a tattered pant leg, a wristwatch still in good condition. But nothing else, really. Blood everywhere. Its blood. Someone else’s blood. Probably all of the above. And above all else, the growling. This crazy, animal growl that you could hear from three blocks away. Like nothing I’ve ever heard before. Like a hungry wolverine. This animal urge to feed.

I thought about things like: "I should get a gun. I should get supplies." But I did none of that stuff. I went home to get Helen and Sasha and Danny and we hid. I mean, that makes sense, right? They were eating people out there. What the fuck was I supposed to do?

And fuck you for questioning.

I wish I could go back to every bullshit zombie show I ever saw and when the people decide to get all brave and "go on a run" to get gasoline or medical supplies or Mars bars or some bullshit, I would say: "No! Nobody does that! Only idiots who then get eaten go outside. Everyone sane stays inside!"

And we did. We boarded the windows and locked the doors and hunkered down in the basement. We didn’t make any sounds. We ate what we had in the house. We used a chamber pot and emptied it out the second story into the flower bed at night. Gross? I’ll tell you what’s gross – getting your face eaten off. That’s gross.

We did some smart stuff. When everything first went to hell we first filled up everything we could in the house with water – tubs, buckets, bottles, whatever. And that lasted the four of us about nine days, with rationing, after the plumbing went out. I was pretty proud of that. My idea. That probably gave everyone another week or so.

I’m not a bad man. I was a good father. A good husband.

No one is perfect.

I survey the scraps that I’ve found in my trash-collecting for the day. Some bits of copper wire. Maybe I’ll be able to trade those for something. For what, I don’t know. With whom, I have even less of an idea. I avoid everyone I could possibly come into contact with. A sensible precaution.

On my kitchen counter I have some bits of eggshell and some orange peels. The eggshell I might be able to use for a stew, or to flavor some soup broth, if it came to that. I’m not quite there yet – my stomach doesn’t feel right anyway – but in a day or two I might be that hungry. The orange peels I’m not sure about. I eye them suspiciously. They’re good for something, I just haven’t figured it out yet.

Finally it hits me: tea. I’ll heat up some water and boil the orange peels, letting the juice soak out into the hot water to give it some flavor. This is how they used to make tea, I think to myself, without any firm basis in reality. It’s not like I can google it. And now we have to learn these things again for ourselves. Not like I give a shit about rebuilding, or what comes next. I’m only living for revenge now. I’m going to kill every last one of them, and then when they’re all gone … I don’t know. Then we’ll see what comes next. Maybe I’ll move on to be with my family. Maybe.

But for now, I’m focused on heating up these orange peels to make some tea. One by one, I’m slicing these orange peels as thin as I can make them and then easing them into the hot water. I’m pretty sure the thin slicing will help the flavor come out. Somehow that just makes sense to me.

I’m optimistic this tea will help my stomachache, which is killing me. I’ve been shitting blood for the last two days. I’m in a desperate place now, and I’ll try anything. It’s beyond pain. It’s a stomachache beyond anything I’ve ever felt before, like churning balls of fire in my stomach, just turning over themselves again and again, tying up my organs like some monkey’s fist knot.

[ Continue to page 4 ]